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Ramp to Revenue

by Elay Cohen

September 14, 2015

From the very beginning of my time at Salesforce, the phrase “ramp to revenue” was always on the forefront of every sales and marketing conversation.

With the explosion of SaaS companies, the need for more focus and energy to ramp sales teams faster and faster is even more important today than those early days. The conversation is even hotter than ever. The stakes are higher. We’re innovating faster. We have more competition. Our buyers are more educated. The sales process is more complex and less linear. Our sales teams are expected to get up to speed, keep up, stay ahead or move on.

There is a revolution happening. The old way of sales training and getting up to speed is over. Video and mobile make it finally possible to connect sales teams around a shared consciousness of what it takes to win. Sales execs around the planet can easily share best practices in video pitch contests and objection handling video shorts. Let’s embrace this movement together and help our sales teams ramp faster and more efficiently.

Ramp is much more than just watching a bunch of videos and a completing a test. Ramp is about sharing what’s working and what’s not working in an efficient way. Ramp is about picking up a mobile device, delivering a pitch and instantly getting feedback from peers around the world. Ramp is about sharing what it takes to win and what lessons we learned from losses. Ramp is about knowing the stories. Ramp is about putting points on the board faster. Ramp applies to new reps and veterans. Ramp is about launching products faster and more efficiently. Ramp is about improving pipeline quality and shortening sales cycles.

Accelerating “ramp to revenue” brings predictability to our forecasts by sharing what it takes to win and quickly learning from our mistakes.

Fast and predictable “ramp to revenue” is a direct result of the right cadence and communications. Ramp to revenue repeatability results from ongoing training and professional development and a lot of practice. Ramp to revenue becomes fact after it is recorded and told, and retold, with video storytelling, peer-to-peer feedback and best practice sharing.

Here is a list of proven actions to accelerate “ramp to revenue” of sales teams:

Ramp to Revenue Action #1: Turn go to market strategies into sales values that are branded and become sales mantras for repeatable sales motion.

Ramp to Revenue Action #2: Turn up the volume on cadence by creating and publishing prescribed monthly calendars with weekly goals, sales huddles and milestones for sales teams.

Ramp to Revenue Action #3: Give first line sales managers content, tools, and templates to run sales teams, facilitate team meetings/QBRs, and coach better.

Ramp to Revenue Action #9: Turn win/loss stories into conversations for salespeople to share their experiences and learn from each other.

What are your ramp to revenue actions that aren’t included on this list?

Also, please you can watch a prerecorded talk. Click here to watch it. We dove into each action area and shared best practices you can use immediately. We look forward to continuing the conversation.

About the Author

Elay Cohen

Elay Cohen is the author of SalesHood: How Winning Sales Managers Inspire Sales Teams to Succeed and the co-founder of SalesHood, a SaaS sales enablement platform and community for sales professionals. Elay is the former Senior Vice President of Sales Productivity at Salesforce. Recognized as the company's "2011 Top Executive", and credited for creating and executing all of Salesforce's sales productivity programs that accelerated its growth from $300M to $3B+ in revenue. The sales training and sales support innovations delivered over these years by Elay and his team to thousands of sales reps resulted in unprecedented hypergrowth. He also created the Partner Relationship Management (PRM) category.